Eileen Wang resigned from her post as mayor of Arcadia on Monday, hours after federal prosecutors unsealed charges that she had secretly worked on behalf of China's government while in office.
Wang, 58, agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of acting as an unregistered foreign agent. She faces up to 10 years in prison at sentencing.
The Justice Department said Wang, along with co-conspirator Yaoning "Mike" Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, ran a website called US News Center that posed as a news outlet for the local Chinese American community. Instead, prosecutors alleged, the site became a vehicle for spreading Chinese government propaganda and defending Beijing's policies on sensitive issues.
"Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy," said Bill Essayli, an assistant US attorney overseeing the case. "This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China's efforts to corrupt our institutions."
Arcadia, a Los Angeles County city of roughly 54,000 residents, said in a statement that Wang's conduct occurred before she took office in December 2022. The city council elected her to that body in November 2022.
"The allegations at the center of this case, that a foreign government sought to exert influence over a local elected official, are deeply troubling," Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said. "This investigation concerns individual conduct, and the charges are for conduct that ceased after Ms. Wang was sworn into office."
The Justice Department presented evidence of Wang's coordination with Beijing officials through encrypted messaging. In June 2021, a PRC government official sent Wang and others pre-written articles defending China's policies in Xinjiang. Within minutes, Wang posted one to her website and confirmed to the official that it was live. The official responded: "So fast, thank you everyone."
Months later, Wang communicated with John Chen, described by prosecutors as a high-level intelligence operative with direct access to President Xi Jinping. She asked him to post articles from her website, writing: "This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send."
Chen pleaded guilty in November 2024 to acting as an illegal foreign agent and was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison. Sun was arrested in December 2024, pleaded guilty to the same charge, and received four years in federal prison in February.
The case represents one of several recent prosecutions involving what authorities describe as China's efforts to influence American local officials and shape public discourse through covert networks.
Author James Rodriguez: "A sitting mayor taking orders from Beijing on what to publish should alarm every voter in the country, but the fact that she was elected first, then exposed, suggests these networks operate in plain sight."
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